The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten [143]
I sat under the Sporty Porkers’ tent, eating ribs and drinking water in a stuporous reverie until my assistant stepped in to tell me that a full fifteen minutes had passed. I had five minutes to walk to the next team, Ol’ Hawg’s Breath of Memphis, sponsored by Schering-Plough. And then on to M & M Cooker of Francisco, Indiana.
“Great barbecue makes you want to slap your granny up the side of her head,” the southern saying goes. Only Sporty Porkers made me feel quite that way. M & M cooked up a very fine rib, but not quite equal to the artistry of Sporty Porkers. Walking back to the judges’ tent with my assistant, I filled out the three scorecards, awarding mostly 10s to the Sporty Porkers, 9s and 10s to M & M, and 8s to Ol’ Hawg’s Breath.
At the end of the day, after the final round of judging, as the sun swooped low over the mighty river and burnished the teeming masses like so many tiny bronzed trophies, the winners were announced. A team called Apple City BBQ from Murphysboro, Illinois, placed first in Ribs; Delta Smokers from Cleveland, Mississippi, came in second; and Backwoods Boys BBQ of Trenton, Tennessee, was third. The grand champion of the entire event and winner in the Shoulder category was the Other Side, from Poplar Bluff, Missouri; the team was named after Captain Mike Clark’s business, the Other Side Dental and Medical Supply. The Whole Hog prize was won by the very visible and dedicated Paddlewheel Porkers.
My first reaction was to feel depressed for the Sporty Porkers, who had placed only eighth in Ribs. They had spent seven thousand dollars to participate in the Big One.
My second reaction was to swoon at the thought that within walking distance there existed multiple slabs of barbecued ribs superior to any I had ever tasted.
My third reaction was to grab a map of Tom Lee Park and hurry over to Apple City BBQ to get me a taste of a world championship rib. Apple City’s red-and-white-striped tent was surrounded by a white picket fence and carpeted with Astroturf, an immaculate oasis among the dust and smoke that stretched for hundreds of yards around it. In contrast, the Apple City cooker looked like a charred hydrogen bomb—a huge, bulging black cylinder resting on its side with great spherical ends and two stubby smokestacks rising from the top. In the chaos and press of the congratulatory crowds, I did not even get near an Apple City rib. My wife tried to interest me in a display of country line dancing. But all I could think about was what the future would bring.
Three days later I was back in New York and on the telephone to Mike Mills, Apple City’s congenial captain, who was back in Murphysboro. I was in luck. While most competition barbecue teams cook only ten to twenty times a year in contests across the Deep and mid-South, Mills cooks barbecue nearly every day at his own 17th Street Bar and Grill. Soon three slabs of ribs were heading my way by Federal Express overnight delivery.
Apple City BBQ cooks its loin and baby back ribs skinned and bone down for six to six and a half hours on a Ferris wheel that revolves in its menacing cooker amidst indirect heat from the sides and direct heat from underneath, both generated by Hollandbrand pure hickory briquettes made in Crossville, Tennessee, site of the largest hickory grove in the nation. Southern Illinois is apple-orchard country, and right before every contest, Apple City cuts green applewood prunings that will produce an aromatic smoke in its cooker. The team believes that taking dry applewood and soaking it in water would remove its aroma; fully grown applewood logs contain too many harsh tars and resins.
Before they go into the cooker, the ribs are rubbed with a secret mixture of eighteen spices. Sometimes Mills claims that each of the six team members knows only three ingredients; no two team members are allowed in the kitchen at the same time. Other times Mills says he’d be happy to tell me all the ingredients, but then he’d have to shoot me.
“We go on